


Twenty Three Steps Towards Understanding William Brandt

by donutsandcoffee



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Clint Barton is William Brandt, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsandcoffee/pseuds/donutsandcoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will thinks his team has a warped sense of what’s dangerous and what’s not, but in their defense, they save human civilization on a monthly basis.</p><p>Maybe this time he’ll stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Three Steps Towards Understanding William Brandt

**Author's Note:**

> or, in which I dump my brandt-related headcanons. including actually clint!brandt because when I was writing this, I came to a realization that clint!brandt is part of my brandt headcanon. not part of the juxtaposition-verse
> 
> format inspired/strongly influenced by [Thirteen Steps To Understanding Something You Can’t](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/16/thirteensteps.html) by veracious
> 
> originally posted [on tumblr](http://donutsncoffee.tumblr.com/post/26205240037/fic-twenty-three-steps-towards-understanding-william). posted on AO3 by request

1.  _adrenaline_  

Unlike the infamous Ethan Hunt, William Brandt never understands the constant and perpetual  _need_  to be in action. Ethan laughs at the face of danger and rushes head first to action, climbing the world’s tallest building before considering other options at least twice; but Will is the true spy who prefers to stay in the darkness, all calculations and careful thinking.

Maybe it has something to do with his father, drunk more often than not and angry all the time, who hit him if he stood up and hit him more if he stood out. Maybe it has something to do with IMF, an organization that officially never existed and one he’s been working in for years. Maybe it has something to do with Croatia, that if he’d thought things through maybe he could’ve saved Julia and  _fuck what the_   _heck_ was _he thinking—_

Maybe it doesn’t.

(William Brandt doesn’t like danger.)

 

 

2.  _benji_

William Brandt is two-third spy, one-third care bear and all in all a collection of awkward pauses.

Don’t listen to the rumors; this is the truth.

Well yes, he could disassemble, reassemble, and perform a functions check on an M240G medium machine gun under 50 seconds, all that military-slash-spy skills set—that’s where the two-third comes from. But he’s also still flustered whenever someone compliments his suit and a complete softy on anything that’s remotely adorable; he once almost compromised an entire mission because a cat was almost run over by a truck.

I was also at the enemy’s gunpoint, but I think he missed that part.

He did say that might mean I’m not cute, but he’s clearly just joking. I’m the cutest thing Will has ever met. 

He also did say that he may have forgotten that because I am always in front of my computer during missions, but he’s obviously making that up. Active, competent field agent and all. James Bond is British. Make the connection.

 

 

3.  _can’t_

Sometimes he wakes up sweaty and panting, and he would be halfway through the door before realizing that it was all just a dream, that he’s not in Croatia, that he’s not in that hotel room splattered with fresh blood and smells faintly of smoke and gunshots.

His heart almost stopped when he saw Jane kicked Moreau out of the Burj Khalifa because once again  _death_ and  _hotel room_ were in the same sentence. He then hated himself for being triggered by such tenuous connection and shouted at Jane, because _anger_ is much easier than  _guilt._

He still can’t kill in a hotel room.

 

 

4.  _danger_  

Will thinks he’s dangerous.

Not the I’m-one-of-the-best-agents-in-the-world dangerous, and not the I-can-kill-you-with-a-toothpick dangerous, either. Will thinks he’s dangerous because people trust him  _too much_ and  _too easily_  that his own incompetence would— _will_ —get them killed one day. And that’s why he kept moving around, never allowing himself to get attached to anything.

He told the team about this once. 

Much to his surprise, they all shrugged; Jane gave him a small smile, Ethan patted his shoulder and Benji ominously said, “we are all dangerous in our own ways,” and started describing how he once protected a bystander from a thug,  _and do you know the guy had a dragon tattoo? Because the guy had a bloody dragon tattoo and I still managed to stop him—_

He thinks his team has a warped sense of what’s dangerous and what’s not, but in their defense, they save human civilization on a monthly basis.

Maybe this time he’ll stay.

(William Brandt still doesn’t like danger, though.)

 

 

5.  _ethan_

Until today, I never understood why I told him about Julia.

He’s not the only person affected by her ‘death’. We had a house in the suburbs last time, lived there for a month or so; the old lady who lived across the street became Julia’s best friend instantly, and I think she almost lost the will to live when someone delivered the news. We also used to go this steakhouse every weekend; Julia and the chef there were on a first-name basis. I delivered the news myself, and I swear, the guy was  _inconsolable._

I never told them the truth and probably never will. I told Brandt.

I don’t understand why.

Although it helps that I trust Brandt with my life.

 

 

6.  _forgiveness_

He hasn’t forgiven himself for what happened in Croatia, but he’s learning to.

 

 

7.  _guilt_

Will has a photographic memory and memorized a dictionary once, but this is what he always sees under guilt:

Emotion manifested due to past mistakes; a pathetic attempt to justify what has been done wrong and  _could’ve been done right_ ; an unequal retribution towards the wrongs; an insult to the victims; Croatia.

 

 

8.  _holiday_

“Comic-Con, Will. Comic-Con is your idea of  _holiday_.” 

“Why not?”

“No, just… I figured you’d be more of a… technical person, I guess. I don’t know, TED talks, those kinds of things, you know?”

“Pfft, TED talks are for the masses. We are distinguished people.”

“You too, Benji?”

“I can’t believe we’re even discussing this.”

“ _Thank you_ , Ethan—“

“Comic-Con is definitely the best place to go. Did you guys go to this panel last time? I heard it was the best one—“

“…Dorks. All of you.”

“You still love us, Jane.”

 

 

9.  _invincibility_

It’s not that he thinks he’s indestructible; it’s just that he feels that everyone else’s lives worth so much more than his.

 

 

10.  _julia/jane_

He knows that she isn’t dead, but after putting much thought into it, it doesn’t matter—dead or not, what happened is that he didn’t make the right call.

/

I think the same thing about Trevor, except the part when the person in question didn’t die, because he did.

 

 

11.  _killer (not)_

Taking someone’s life is  _literally_  in his job description. To be an agent is to subscribe to the utilitarian point of view, to firmly believe that what you do is for the greater good. Will knows this.

It’s always easier said than done.

“Pull the trigger, Will,” Ethan says to the com, and Will’s grip on his sniper riffle tightened. The target is meters away from him, talking to his phone, unknowing that his life would end in mere seconds.

“Give me a second,” he says.

“Will,” Ethan repeats, and Jane says, more urgently, “pull it  _now_.”

He bites his lower lip, hesitates because he knows that the man is talking to his five-year-old daughter.

He pulls the trigger because he knows that the same man is the head of a mafia that has just secured a shady deal with the local police, effectively having the lives of thousands in his hands. He also knows the man doesn’t have a good track record in keeping lives.

“You’ve saved them, you know,” Benji reminds him later, when they have gone back to the safe house, away from the sidewalk where the man’s brain still probably is, “you’ve saved the lives of these people.”

Will says nothing and continues retching into the toilet bowl.

(He thinks he’s becoming soft. Another part of him tells him he’s becoming human.) 

 

 

12.  _light at the end of the tunnel_

One information he never willingly gives to anyone is that after military, before IMF, he was an assassin.

In comparison to that job, being in IMF is a relief to his conscience.

 

 

13.  _mission impossible_

“Will—“

“On it,” he says before Benji can so much finish his sentence. He immediately turns to the man who’s been pointing his gun at his temple for the last fifteen minutes; before the man can react, he reaches for the gun, putting its safety back on in split seconds and coax it out of the man’s grip; the man pulls back, but he knows better, pressing on the man’s wrist with his right hand and snatching the gun with his left. In three seconds the gun has switched owner, and in another three he has completely dismantled the gun, the bullets clattering on the marble floor.

For a few seconds, the man is dumbfounded, doing nothing except gaping at Will, and those few seconds are all he needs—he pulls the man’s outstretched hand, shifts sideways and spins it so that he now stands behind the man with his arm at a weird,  _painful_ angle, and— _thud_. One hit to the neck and the man is unconscious.

All in all, everything was done at a record speed of seventeen seconds.

He presses the earpiece on his right ear, “Where’s Ethan?”

“Uh… still dangling upside down on the Eiffel Tower.” 

 _Yeah,_  he thinks, chuckling to himself,  _definitely nothing to be proud of, self._

 

_  
_

14.  _namesake_

He changed his last name as soon as he entered the military, because in that hellhole he called home, most would call him by his last name and it reminded him too much of his pathetic excuse of a father.

He changed his first name years later, after a months-long torture in one of the mujahideen camps in Afghanistan.  He escaped from the camp with broken arm and a few less teeth, and when the sun hit his eyes he forced them to stay open until he cried, arms wide open, bathing in the sunlight like a Phoenix risen from the ashes. His colleagues called him a name, his actual name, but he croaked,  _call me Will,_ and  _I will live as William_ , and didn’t speak again for the next three weeks.

(—the real William, William James, was found dead four weeks later in the same camp, presumably executed from helping several prisoners escape, including Will—)

He keeps his middle name because it’s the one his mother gave him.

(William Francis Brandt never loves his mother, but he never hates her, either.)

 

 

15.  _opening up &_

There is only a handful of people who know about a messed-up not-family he used to have. A former partner, now miles away from him, probably still looking for him after he couldn’t stand being an assassin and ran away to IMF. A superior, may or may not have been dead after he stopped keeping in contact years ago. 

These two, and no one else.

He told Benji, Jane, and Ethan about them in a bar after a particularly bad mission. They had just come back from the West Bank, where he almost lost his live to a particularly angry religious fundamentalist, when he heard a bullet whiz past his right ear and only missed him by a few inches because Benji told him through his com about the man’s position, because Jane subdued the man’s partner, because Ethan had broken down the building’s electricity moments ago, obscuring his position.

If there’s ever a test on getting his trust, the team has passed it.

 

 

16.  _parenting_

This is what he told them:

He hates his father like nothing else in the world he’s ever hated. At his father’s funeral he felt a mixture of guilt and satisfaction in seeing a man, the man who’d hurt him and his brother so much, lie dead as no one mourned for him.

He doesn’t hate his mother, but it’s hard to love her either. It’s hard when the woman simply stood by and watched with impassioned eyes as he was beaten mercilessly by his father, his brother crying to her begging,  _please, please make him stop,_  and she didn’t say anything.

He loves his brother with all his heart.

(His brother hated him.

Also, they are all dead.)

 

 

17.  _questions_

He doesn’t really like being asked questions, but he does have a favorite question anyone has ever asked him: “how do you know she’s dead?”

 

 

18.  _redundant_

At the end of the day, Will is just a man who wants to do good.

He keeps count of everything and is well aware that his ledger is dripping with red. He tries to wipe some away, but he isn’t quite sure how; the only ink he has is red, and the more he tries to clean, the redder it becomes. He tries anyway.

Will is a man who wants to do good; he is, however, not a good man.

 

 

19.  _scar_

If people are knives, events are wounds and Croatia is a scar he can never rid of.

 

 

20.  _training (there’s only so much of it that you can do)_

The mission has gone south a few hours ago, and while Benji and Jane managed to escape mostly unscathed, Ethan isn’t as lucky—his right leg was shot, and despite Jane’s efforts, his blood still seeped slowly but steadily through the makeshift bandage. 

“This is my fault,” Will declares, more to himself than to anyone else, but apparently everyone in the van can hear him. Or at least Ethan can, because the man immediately kicks his shin lightly with his bloodied leg.

Ethan also opens his mouth to say something, but Jane is faster, sighing loudly before giving Will a pointed look, “you should look at  _yourself_  right now.”

Maybe Jane has a point.

Will is…. nowhere near as lucky as the rest of his teammates. He got shot twice at his shoulder and kneecap, and he would’ve screamed in pain from the latter if his head is not pounding from the concussion he might have.

“Could’ve been better,” he pauses, making sure he’s not going to vomit before continuing, “I didn’t realize the mark was heading to the safe earlier than expected even though we’ve talked about this before, we’ve  _trained_  this—“

“And  _I_  didn’t inform Ethan about it even though I saw the mark with my own eyes,” Benji says, joining the conversation from behind the wheels, “and we’ve talked about that, too. everyone makes mistakes, Will.”

“We can’t afford mistakes in this line of work,” Will replies.

“And yet here we are,” Ethan counters. “It’s not about being perfect. It’s about deciding what to do after you’ve made your mistakes.”

Will doesn’t say anything.

 

 

21.  _usefulness/uselessness_

He still thinks he’s useless.

He trains more.

 

 

22.  _vermillion_

He once met a woman whose skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood. It was never a fairy tale for her ledger was as red as her lips and hair and  _his_ , but he fell in love nonetheless.

He fell fast and hard, heady and breathless and always running. They fell together and they fell apart, because she kept slipping through his fingers and he kept clutching,  _chasing_.

He never quite stops loving her, but he did learn to stop chasing her.

He went out with Ethan for bungee jumping in Bali one summer. Ethan was checking his harness, hair blown by the wind and grin plastered on his face when he asked,  _how can you not love this? The thrill, the excitement, the_ danger, but Ethan doesn’t understand. 

He can’t love danger because it feels too much like loving her.

 

 

23.  _william_

William Brandt is not a man defined by his past.

He is, however, a man  _changed_  by his past, and the Will before Croatia is a different man from the Will after Croatia, just like the Will before IMF is different from the one after. He doesn’t deny it, nor he is trying to; instead, he works himself around it, so that the Will before Croatia can look into the eyes of the Will after Croatia and says,  _we wouldn’t have it any other way._

(Scars don’t go away, but they don’t hurt, either.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you'd let me explain myself about actually clint!brandt--
> 
> a lot of people have pointed out their differences, which I am aware of because hey, different fandoms/different characters, only same actor, etc--but I love their _similarities_. I love that they're both very competent people. that they have this self-esteem issues, though brandt's can eclipse clint's easily. and I love how that them as the same person can actually work; that brandt could've been clint after croatia, whose self-esteem now brought to a new low. I think it's an interesting idea and worth exploring :)


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